


Overtime

by rjn



Category: Numb3rs (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-17
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-10-11 13:16:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17447690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rjn/pseuds/rjn
Summary: Bertram Laney is wearing Colby Granger’s body armor....That can't be good.





	Overtime

1.

Bertram Laney is wearing Colby Granger’s body armor.

_What the fuck._

Ian Edgerton, from his perch halfway up the hill above the compound, has a partially obscured view of Laney through the second-floor window of the main building of the compound. Ian’s been feeding Charlie information about the wannabe militia contained inside, cataloguing men and weaponry. He’s here for Laney specifically, the leader who had been broken out of prison by his compatriots over a week ago, but things became complicated when the fugitive’s two teenage daughters had been brought to the compound. Now two full teams from Major Crimes are involved and Ian’s role has shifted to a sort of eyes-from-above specialty.

The plan was to maintain a perimeter until nightfall. The girls appear to be locked in a back room with a single guard at the door. If that situation held, tonight the girls would be quietly helped out a window and escorted out of the perimeter by Agents Nikki Betancourt, Jamie Simpson, and Colby Granger. But something happened earlier at the back side of the property and Betancourt had radioed in an adjustment. The girls were no longer alone in the room with the door guarded, and they were, in Nikki’s words, _not safe_. The barely restrained rage in her voice made it all too clear. Granger and Simpson, the SWAT qualified members of their respective teams, had gone ahead with the extraction gambit a few hours early.

_Everyone loves a sunset raid_ , Colby had said, his last words before he and Simpson went silent for their approach of the main building.

There’s been no real unexpected movement inside the building from Ian’s vantage point, no updates from Nikki since the extraction maneuver began. But Simpson and Granger had gone in for the girls, some minutes passed, and now Edgerton has just watched his fugitive casually sliding on an FBI vest like he owned it. Ian feels a cold lick of terror at the edge of his sniper-calm consciousness.  

He keys the radio with his non-trigger hand and signals a frequency change. Don comes back to him on the secondary channel.

“Ian, what’s going on?”

“Not sure, but I just saw Laney putting on FBI-issue tactical armor. I think he’s got Granger’s vest.”

The vest Laney has appropriated is identifiable as Colby’s by the special order army-style neck protection cuff. Most FBI field agents are worried about bullets and knives and go for the heaviest protection at the expense of agility, upsized plates over the center mass. Ex-Army guys are always more keenly aware of the hazards of shrapnel and major arteries and skew towards more coverage and lighter gauge for maneuverability. There is probably a Bureau psychology paper somewhere concerning the motives behind certain tactical armor choices and modifications, and Ian suspects there is also something in there about loners who eschew vests almost entirely and instead rely on an innate knack for invisibility. Actually, Ian suspects there are a lot of Bureau-sponsored psych papers that feature his gleaming personage.

Eppes takes a few seconds to compute the implication of the vest on Laney, then swears. There’s a short pause, barely long enough for the communication Ian knows is happening on a different channel, then Nikki’s voice as she checks in at Don’s request on the secondary frequency. Don cuts her off quickly.

“Where the hell are your guys, Betancourt?”

“Simpson boosted Granger in about one… a couple minutes ago. Girls are out.” She sounds calm. Everything must look fine from her side of the compound. “Sim’s in position two as planned, waiting for Granger. They have a clear path to the safe zone. Girls should be outside the perimeter in five.”

“No eyes on Colby?”

“Negative.”

Ian hears her confidence falter in those few syllables. He can almost hear her counting back in her head how long Granger’s been out of her sight.

A shot rings out, from the direction of the compound but aimed uselessly high. Nothing to worry about for the agents surrounding the property, except that they’ve lost the element of surprise. The militia apparently has no clue where the FBI teams are located, at least. Don’s command voice comes over the comms, and he is loud enough that Ian can also hear him across the distance from the command point down in the valley.

“Hold fire. _HOLD._ They have our flank team. All stand-by.”

“I have the girls in the safe zone,” Simpson calls in.

The shot had come out after him, Ian thinks, one of the militia’s foot soldiers not wanting to give up the girls too easily, but hesitant to do more than firing a useless shot at the sky, not wanting to put a bullet into one of the boss’s daughters either.

Nikki comes back on and confirms the safe arrival of Simpson and the two girls outside the perimeter. And so the question hangs over them. _Where the fuck is Granger?_

 

2.

_~Two Days Earlier~_

“This is some serious firepower for a small-timer,” Don says, looking over a scrolling list on the big screen. He has already paged through the details in the file in his hand, but there’s something about seeing it all in one place that puts the scope of the thing into the appropriate gut-chilling perspective. He is sitting on the edge of the table in front of his brother. Charlie is seated in a chair operating the screen through his laptop. Don’s right hand covers the watch on his left wrist, the one holding the file, in his new alternative to compulsive time-checks.

Charlie had used material from one of David’s informants combined with C2-Sky’s transport records to map the voids that indicated a pattern in illicit shipping. After a few weeks of undercover work, Colby had confirmed the movement of guns and drugs were likely funneling to a single buyer.

“Someone is building an army,” Colby puts in. He’s standing a bit off-centre at the back of the room, like he’s not sure if he belongs in the meeting and he’s prepared to disappear if asked.  The awkward half-in/half-out positioning is for a different reason, though. He’d been working his undercover loading gig at the C2-Sky’s unairconditioned warehouse overnight and didn’t have a chance to shower before coming to the office. The distance he’s keeping is a courtesy move.

“An army fueled by amphetamines,” adds Don. “That’s not a terrifying prospect at all.”

Don tosses the file on the table.

“We’re not going to make much progress on this tonight. Charlie, give Colby what he needs to write it up and then everyone call it a day.”

Charlie leans back into his laptop and starts summarizing information. Don stands up and goes to return to his office, but hesitates at the door, where Colby seems to be waiting for him.

“Am I back at the shipping plant tonight?”

There’s only the slightest hint of desperation to Colby’s voice, and he hides his exhaustion well, but Don can’t resist toying with him a bit.

“I thought you would be enjoying the extra paycheck.”

Colby shakes his head ruefully and Don almost feels bad for teasing. Colby has a quixotic savings account for an out-of-reach beach house that eats up all of the money he can bring himself to set aside and Don’s team has been working unapproved, underappreciated, unpaid overtime since halfway through this quarter.

“Cash under the table. Everything I make gets logged as evidence,” Colby says.

Don smiles.

“Take the night off. You’ve got enough to work with tomorrow.”

Colby raises his eyebrows in an unspoken question and Don nods quickly before brushing by his agent. It’s a testament to double shift exhaustion that Colby would make even that much of a gesture in the office.

Don is home just before seven, but he spent his time up until then stuck at his desk on a phone call, so he hasn’t completed his part of their bargain when Colby shows up, showered and wearing fresh jeans, a black polo, and a baseball cap. The cap is a new addition to Colby’s standard off-duty jeans and t-shirts uniform and it looks damn good on the young agent. Not to mention it tweaks every nostalgic hormone for every coming-of-age, baseball obsessed fantasy Don ever had growing up. He would like to think Colby’s wearing it in response to enthusiastic praise of the look last week, but he already admitted it was to keep the warehouse dust out of his hair during his undercover gig, and that he’s kept them in standard daytime rotation since being unsure about his most recent haircut. His funny little streaks of vanity just about kill Don, just the fact that his bulldozer of an ex-Army run-and-gun FBI agent sometimes cares about the line of his haircut, the evenness of his tan, or where his shirtsleeves are going to cut on his biceps.

Colby looks hopeful, almost, on the verge of a big meal and relaxation. Don feels awful knowing he’s about to crush him.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t get a chance to stop for takeout.”

Don’s apology comprises the first words either of them speak, and the look of dismay that greets his admission is heartbreaking.

“I’ll order a pizza right now,” he offers. “I have beer.”

Colby makes a happy noise somewhere in his throat at the promising consolation, but it’s ruined by a jaw-cracking yawn.

Don laughs and pushes Colby towards the couch.

“Jesus. Sit down before you fall down.”

Colby gestures rudely but Don notices how heavily he drops onto the couch. When Don reappears minutes later with two bottles of beer, Colby’s head is leaned back on the cushions and his eyes are closed.

“It’s this criminal work ethic, man.”

Don isn’t surprised that Colby clocked his approach. Tired as he is, Colby is still apparently at some residual level of high-alert, a by-product of undercover work. Even working as a grunt, loading crates of guns and drugs, and occasional shipments of legitimate cargo, the stress level is high when you’re undercover. At times, Colby seems capable of managing an unending deluge of stress with casual practicality and a remarkably pleasant disposition.  He is the kind of guy who was most certainly a hyperactive kid. Rambunctious, they would have called it in those days. And traces of that energy remain, honed and focused by bootcamps and training, the military and Quantico.

David calls him Action Man, like Colby is motivated to jump into the fray in some sort of thrill-seeking capacity, energized, but Don knows it wears him down the same as anyone else. And these days especially, Colby seems just as happy taking a slow, backseat investigative role on occasion. Guys like Colby are in danger of burning out young, but he’s good at other things. He’s good with Charlie compared to most agents that work with him. Good with young rough-around-the-edges new hires, too. Don thinks there might be something in that, something to eventually shift Colby into, to take less of a physical toll.

Don slips onto the other end of the couch and holds one of the beers out, maintaining his grasp on it until he’s sure Colby has a firm enough grip.

“Who knew massive piles of artillery could weigh so much, huh?”

Colby rocks his head back and forth to stretch his neck out.

“I’m not saying I don’t have an ethical issue with drugs and arms dealing, but I do respect their hustle.”

Don chuckles.

“I’m sorry you’ve had to work it for so long.”

Colby takes a long pull on his beer before he shrugs.

“That’s the job. It’s just lucky for you I look like such a convincing piece of white trash.”

Don laughs outright at that. Colby hasn’t shaved for a couple of days and he’s a couple of weeks longer than he’d like into the uneven haircut, but he still looks like a varsity quarterback polished up for homecoming. It’s not a completely fair description, but Don has always struggled to pinpoint the comfortable wholesome appeal that is Colby Granger. There’s something just slightly inscrutable about him, even now in the era of his excruciating openness and honesty towards Don. He looks too soft-souled for a staunch military man, too wry-eyed for a beach bum, though he’s played up those aspects of himself for investigations in the past.

“Lucky for you, I think you look pretty good,” Don says, tentatively sliding one hand down the top of Colby’s nearest thigh.

Colby groans at the touch, but it seems to take a lot out of him. He sinks deeper into the cushions and Don leans over him to take away the beer before it is inadvertently let go. He pauses once he has the beer safely in his own hold and bends his neck down to kiss Colby. Colby hums contentedly and musters up a shred more energy. His hand slides over Don’s neck, holding him there for a moment before Don needs to pull away to keep his balance, his knee sunk and unstable on the soft couch cushion.

“Am I pretty good looking enough to just lie there?” Colby asks, smirking again with a curious combination of randy teenage hormones and middle-aged exhaustion in his tone.

“As enticing an offer as that is, let’s get you fed and rested first. I couldn’t handle it if you fell asleep on me in the middle of that.”

The kicked puppy look on Colby’s face doesn’t exactly match with the gravel-throated profane grievance about his blue balls. The pizza arrives before Don can tease any more, and they take the lazy route, Don producing a roll of paper towel and the two of them eating efficiently, leaning near the box at the kitchen island.

They usually finish a large pizza between the two of them, but Colby barely puts in half his usual effort, discarding a few picked over crusts, leaving them to fossilize like bones in the box. Don used to tease him about his weird eating habits- no crusts, no dairy in the morning, no carbonation unless it’s in the name of beer, coffee sometimes right before bed - but Colby eats a lot and burns a lot of energy, so whatever works for his weirdo fueling strategies, Don is happy to provide.

That’s what has him in he kitchen trying to remember how the espresso machine works, while Colby shuffles back to the couch. Colby had brought the machine over one time after dismissing Don’s rust-edged not-so-stainless steel Mr. Coffee. He had said it was dead easy to operate, but during the morning demonstration of its functions, Don had been distracted by Colby wearing his running clothes. The details he mostly remembers are a too-tight borrowed FBI t-shirt and that Colby Granger is the only person he’s ever kissed that tastes good with coffee breath.

He finally gets the right series of buttons and the machine comes to life. The espresso smells heavenly, but Don’s stomach protests the very thought of drinking any at this hour on top of more than his share of pizza and a couple of beers drunk too quickly. He takes it into the living room.

Colby has made it to the couch, but he’s just standing near it, head on tilt.

“Y’okay Colby?”

He receives a nod in return, and a much more enthusiastic look when Colby catches a whiff of the coffee.

“Aw man, I am now.”

Colby takes the cup and drinks the espresso in one go.

“I was just thinking I need to brush my teeth before I sit down again in case I can’t bring myself to get back up, but espresso… yeah, this is better.”

Don shakes his head, an amused look on his face.

“Only you can fall asleep on that,” he says.

“The couch or the espresso?”

“Either. Only you.”

Colby smiles, already looking a little more alert than before, and heads for Don’s bedroom.

“I’m not going to sleep for a while yet,” he promises.

 

 

3.

For all his exhaustion, and exertion beyond just lying there, Colby doesn’t sleep past 5am. Don wakes up to the heavy presence of Colby’s eyes on him, followed by the solid press of Colby’s body, and Colby’s mouth against his neck.

“’Morning” is snuffled into his throat.

“Morning, Colb. You sleep much?”

His voice comes out creaky and he feels Colby smile into his neck before soft spikes of sandy brown hair swipe against Don’s jaw in negative.

“I think I’m still on nightshift hours.”

Colby starts to pull away, but Don brings his arms up to hold him.

“A couple more nights next week, tops. We’re so close to nailing these guys,” he says.

“Ugh.” Colby pulls away with more strength and Don lets him go. “Can you not talk about _nailing those guys_ when we’re in bed together? Those dudes are gross.”

Don laughs.

“Sorry. No shop talk. I just haven’t had a chance to tell you how much I appreciate what you’re doing.”

“My job, you mean.”

“It’s above and beyond…”

“Nope,” says Colby. And he’s pulling up to slouch against the headboard, further away from Don on the large bed. “Nuh-uh. We can’t talk about work here.”

“What? I can’t tell you when I notice your effort?”

 “It’s the way you say it, and your timing is always bad.” Colby rubs his hands over his face. “You know I’m not putting in the extra effort for you, right? It has nothing to do with our… personal… reasons.”

“I wouldn’t want that,” Don says. “If I’m not being fair, you need to tell me.”

Colby swears under his breath. He sounds weary of talking, but he doesn’t let it go either.

“You ever figure my workload is what it is, because, lot of times, I’m the best guy for the job?”

He’s edging off the bed and standing up before Don can reach for him.

“I know that, Colby. Why can’t I just say I appreciate how much you do?”

Colby looks at the ceiling when he speaks.

“Why can’t you just say it at the office and not so much when we’re, uh, here?”

Don’s mouth is stuck open for longer than he’d like. He’s standing in front of a minefield and he knows it. There’s no way he can make the right sequence of steps at this hour of the morning, so he backs up down the known path.

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

As a rule, Colby Granger isn’t a fan of the strategic retreat, but he lets Don have it.

“I wanna hit the gym before work,” he says instead. Which means without Don, because Don can’t hang with the guys and girls that hit the FBI gym with Colby before work. For one thing he’s the boss they need to bitch about and for another thing, they’re all freakishly muscular 30-year-olds who think MMA-style death matches are good bonhomie.

Colby shoves himself into his civies from the day before. He will shower after the gym and change into one of the suits he keeps stashed at work. Pre-work gym always takes away some of Don’s favorite time with Colby, from the showering to the coffee and shared commute, but he tries not to feel slighted. Colby hasn’t had much of a chance to fit in his workouts lately.

“I’ll see you at the office,” Colby says as he finishes dressing.

“Okay. We good?” Don manages to keep his voice casual when he asks.

Colby rolls his eyes like Don is being too tedious for words, but he also crawls back over the bed to kiss him goodbye. Oh yeah. They’re good.

 

4.

“I don’t understand how getting their full dispatch logs will help us,” Don says. “We don’t know what is in each truck.”

Don is trying to get a handle on Charlie’s idea before he brings it to the team. He knows they’ll all be on board for a plan that leads them to whatever entity is amassing such a frighteningly huge arsenal, but something about the case is starting to gnaw at him. A part of him wants to pull Colby away from the undercover placement and carry out a simple raid to get the C2-Sky guys on trafficking charges. Unfortunately, that would only take one shipment of weapons and drugs off the street and would alert the amassing group that the FBI and ATF, even the DEA, are paying attention to their weapons hoarding.

“But the trucks are huge,” is Charlie’s response, as if it explains everything.

“Yes, Dr. Eppes, trucks _are_ big.”

Sky is blue, water is wet, trucks are big. Don almost laughs at the annoyed look on Charlie’s face. It’s crazy to Don that his brother can still occasionally be exasperated when asked to clarify his thinking, as if Charlie hasn’t been miles ahead in inexplicable intellectual terrain every minute of his life.

“So chances are the trucks are loaded with both legitimate and illegitimate payload.”

“Maybe. Not all trucks. They wouldn’t want every driver knowing the location of a terrorist arms cache.”

“Even better. If one driver is doing all of the illegal cargo, we’ll be able to narrow down a location faster.”

“They’re not going to keep entries for illegally acquired weapons delivered to a terrorist’s home address in the dispatch log.”

“Yeah, I get that, Don.”

“And Colby can’t be sneaking around opening every single crate that comes through the place anymore. He’s taken more than enough risks for this op already.”

“He doesn’t have to. Listen. Companies like this use a logistics program to determine delivery routes. An algorithm determines the logistically ideal course. In some cases, drivers will even be provided an electronic file of the route for their truck’s navigation system.”

“There’s no way they’re putting drugs and guns deliveries into that system.”

“Well, no. In this case, they would manually override the logistics program for truckloads that have to make an illegal shipment.”

“So they take a legitimate shipping route that is most convenient...”

“And then override the plan to fit the illegal shipment into that route, off-book. We could compare the logged shipments to the logistical ideal, and determine which routes were manually changed. We can determine when the algorithm was interrupted and get a general area for the off-record destination, plus figure out which driver and truck will have the illegal payload.”

“Then the next time Colby loads that particular truck, he lo-jacks it, and the rest of us will already be in the right neighborhood, ready to jump on the buyers.”

“In the act,” Charlie proclaims, visibly pleased with himself.

“I like it,” Don says. “Check with Colby to make sure you have the full dispatch log and do your thing.”

Now he just has to break it to Colby that he’s headed back to the shipping warehouse tonight.

 

5.

Colby puts the final touches on his action plan for the night’s undercover work and forwards it to Don. He hopes he has time for a long nap, but the sliver of a window he can see from the bullpen shows the low angle of the winter sun. He folds his arms on his desk and puts his head down.

“What time is it?”

It seems easier to ask David than to turn his head to look at his watch. The answer is instantaneous.

“Almost six o’clock.”

Apparently, his partner has been watching the clock. David had approved the final review of Colby’s plan a half hour earlier and could have left for home while Colby typed out the fine-tuning. Colby realizes belatedly that while he was laboriously pecking away at the report in his typical slow fashion, David has been waiting around for him.

“Are you coming back on for the thing tonight?”

“I’m on-call,” David says. He stands up from his desk and starts to pack up his briefcase, nudging Colby’s chair with his foot, making him lift his head. “Charlie’s got it down to those two drivers. If one comes up, and you can plant the GPS transmitter, we’ll all scramble to Charlie’s ‘Zone of Probability’ to pick up the trail.”

“I need to show up at C2-Sky by ten or they won’t have a spot for me on the loading side of things.”

“Tardiness is the one crime these guys won’t tolerate?”

“Pretty much.”

David casts a glance over his shoulder to see if Don’s back in his cubical. Seeing that he is, David pitches his voice to ask generally.

“Walking out?” he asks.

Colby looks in the same direction of David’s shoulder check and sees Don shakes his head without looking up from his screen. He should walk out with David, get home marginally earlier for his power nap, but he does want to discuss the plans with Don before he rests. Colby catches himself before he lets a yawn escape and shakes his head too.

“Not just yet. Hey, if things go well, maybe I’ll see you later at the big bust, though.”

He watches David until the elevator closes behind him. He turns his chair and stands up out of it in one motion, in the way that makes the empty chair roll out of their horseshoe of desk and file cabinet, and into the path of foot traffic around their desks. He leaves it where it stops on the off chance it stays that way long enough to aggravate David the next time he comes in.

Don is at his desk squinting at a file, looking nothing like a man who supposedly passed his recent eye exam with flying colors. Colby makes a mental note to call Don out on that later.

“Hey Boss.”

 “Hey, Colby. I haven’t had a chance to read the pre-action yet, but David ran me through the final version, so you’re all set.”

“There’s not a lot to it,” Colby says with a shrug. “Wait for the right truck per Charlie’s analysis, lo-jack it, finish out my character enriching shift of manual labor so as not to raise suspicion why the Feeby looking dude clocked out the second the contraband shipped.”

Don frowns up at him for a second.

“If you’re worried you don’t look the part enough, now is a bit late to mention it.”

Colby sumps into the edge of the cubical wall a little.

“I was _kidding,_ Don. I’m pretty sure if I looked suspicious, I would have been shoved in a crate in pieces and delivered to a landfill by now.”

“That’s great for my anxiety level, thanks.”

“Sorry. I’m just tired and kind of in a mood. I’m heading out to get a solid two-hour nap if you wanna come with.”

“Yeah, definitely. Just before we leave work mode…”

“We’re not having sex on your desk, Don.”

“Funny,” Don says, but he also runs his eyes over the surface of his very fully-covered desk with dismay.

“Sorry,” Colby says, pointing at himself. “Bad mood.”

“Before we leave work mode. Are you okay if we’re all stationed at the edges of Charlie’s zones? If you want, we could have a unit stick closer to the warehouse in case anything… In case something goes wonky.”

“Nah. Just make sure we get the buyers so I can go back to just working too damn hard at my one and only real job.”

Don nods.

“I’m not crazy about the distance between you and us.”

“I’ve been doing this one for a while. Haven’t needed anyone yet.”

“If you’re sure.”

“Just get the buyers before my blood turns to coffee.”

“We get the buyers from this, I’m authorizing a week-long vacation for you.”

Colby’s mind goes to winter swells and the kind of bone deep soul quenching sleep that follows a day on the water. He is too tired to keep the anticipatory grin off his face.

 

6.

Don kicks off his shoes and takes a stack of files to bed to read while Colby sleeps. The power nap is at Colby’s place, because although he has a miniature apartment, he’s more comfortable there. The place is seriously cramped, though. If Colby had more than, like, a dozen personal belongings, the place would have to be condemned. Even the shower is absurdly tiny, and Don mentions it every time he’s there. _No way you fit in there with your shoulders._ Colby’s answering shrug and _watch me_ still ranks on Don’s top ten list of Words That Turn Into Porn In Colby’s Voice _._

So Colby sleeps, and Don reads his files, feeling vaguely like the walls of a normal sized room have closed in on them, crowded in but cozy, to match the sensation of closeness that comes from being with a guy Colby’s size. It’s way too early for Don to sleep, and a small part of him would rather be back in his full-sized living room, pairing the files with a beer, and the game on for background noise, but Colby asked him over.

Colby is finally starting to ask for things for himself, to go after what he wants, and that’s part of why this thing they have going is so miraculous for Don. Somehow, for some reason, this complex, time-deprived mess of a relationship is what Colby wants. Don is there because Colby is fun and sharp and tough and has a bizarrely sweet nature for someone who spends as much time as they do steeped in violence. But Don is also there at Colby’s behest.

Since everything that happened, since they almost lost him, Colby has been, not more exacting, but something like reflective, meditative. He’s putting the work in to have what he considers a good life. There’s the dream beach house fund, which conjures the idea that one day he’ll be able to retire in fairly good health, healthy enough to surf, anyways. There’s his new focus on work relationships- Colby was the first to figure out and appreciate Nikki’s bluster, and his repaired friendship with David is as familial and instinctive as Don and Charlie’s hard-won bond. And there’s this. With Don. Challenging, but relaxed; unusual, but comfortable.

Colby starts to roll onto his back and snore, so Don sacrifices one of his own pillows to prop against his back, gently rolling him a slight degree, just over onto his side. He probably doesn’t need to be careful. There’s barely enough space in the room for the bed, let alone for falling off of it. Don watches helplessly as Colby rolls back towards him and flattens the pillow. The snoring starts up again. Don looks around at the too close walls, shifts against the too few pillows at his back, and feels lucky to be where he is. There are forty minutes until the alarm goes for Colby’s second shift.

 

7.

Colby finishes out his warehouse shift feeling like a zombie. He hopes he successfully tagged the right truck with the GPS, but there was a moment near the end of his shift where he exhaustedly worried that he had dreamed the whole thing. He takes a short ride on a miserable city bus to where his truck is parked, ensuring that none of the warehouse guys are on the same route when he gets off. He has his real phone stashed in the truck.

Calvin Grammar, his warehouse persona, has a burner phone with a dozen bogus contacts and meaningless text messages preloaded onto it to make it look sufficiently used if anyone should ‘borrow’ it from his locker. They haven’t bothered to update the phone with any new fake messages since the start of the case, so Colby has decided in his head that despite his astoundingly good looks, Calvin Grammar is incredibly unpopular. Colby’s real phone has new voice messages from Don and David and a text from Nikki. News of the successful tracking of a shipment of what Colby thinks, from the weight and from the half-broken code system used by the C2-Sky bosses, was ten to twenty assault rifles.

“We got them,” is all Don says on his message. “Call me as soon as you’re out.”

“Breakfast for everyone on me,” David says. “We’ll fill you in. It’s big, Buddy.”

Nikki’s text message just says _gud wrk mldy_.

She started calling him Moldy Granger a couple of months ago after he forgot a sweaty t-shirt in his locker before going to a week-long training assignment out of town. Apparently, during the ad hoc bomb disposal drill to retrieve and destroy the shirt, the smell had been so distracting that nobody questioned why Don knew Colby’s locker combination.

Colby calls Don first, makes quick assurance that he didn’t get hit by any forklifts, and then puts his truck into gear and heads for the team’s ‘Good Day for the Feds’ breakfast spot. Don and David’s vehicles are in the parking lot when he arrives. Nikki is inside as well, never one to miss a meal when David miraculously pays. Colby recognizes virtually everyone he walks past on the way to his team’s booth. The place is basically a federally funded breakfast and lunch spot, money filtered through Bureau paychecks and exchanged for omelettes and turkey-on-ryes.

“Saved you a seat,” Nikki greets Colby, though the three of them are spaced out to fill the half circle of the booth completely. David and Don look up and there’s a poorly coordinated shifting until room opens at one end of the table for Colby.

Everyone has ordered already, but they kept a menu back for Colby, even though he usually just orders whatever the special is. He glances over the menu but his eyes are too tired to handle the shiny plastic-coated words, so the special it shall be. Colby flips the fourth coffee mug right-side up and must look around a bit too desperately for their server because Don silently slides his full mug over to trade. Colby raises the cup and nods his head in appreciation.

“So, Calvin. How was work?” David asks him cheerfully.

Colby drinks half the coffee before answering.

“Productive? I think? Depends what you guys have.”

He can tell Don is holding back a big smile when he casually confirms that yes, it had been a productive night.

“Bertram Laney,” Nikki blurts suddenly, spilling the news before Don can elaborate.

“You’re kidding me.”

Bertram Laney was a bank robber up until three years ago when Don and the team sent him to prison for the rest of his life. The bank jobs were supposedly funding some sort of quasi-religious militia Laney had dreamed up. One of those _God is the only government I recognize, so I ain’t gonna pay taxes_ things that somehow becomes a _I’d rather kill a Fed than pay his taxes_ thing. Colby had heard about Laney escaping from prison a while back, but it would be insane for him to turn up in LA and not expect to get busted again.

They go quiet while the waitress approaches and Colby puts in his order.

“Maybe not Laney for sure. Baby Harris, at least” Nikki amends afterwards. “No definite sign of Laney yet.”

Baby Harris was Bertram Laney’s second-in-command. The man goes by the one name, Harris, like Cher or Madonna, but everyone familiar with his file knows the first name on his birth certificate is Baby, and everyone in law enforcement makes sure to use his full name at just about every opportunity.

The first three plates arrive.

“That’s crazy. How did this lead to Baby?” Colby notices nobody is eating in front of him. “Dig in, guys. I was probably going to eat a whole second meal alone after you guys left anyways.”

Don takes over, explaining that they tracked the truck from where Charlie told them they could intercept it, and kept their distance, until the truck came to a strange compound established on an old ranch. _Way the hell back of beyond_ , Nikki says. Before they could close in behind the truck down the ranch road, Don was called off by Special Agent Jeremy Bolita, the Supervisory for one of the Bureau’s anti-terrorism teams.

“…So Bolita says I don’t know what brought you guys here, but if it gets him a warrant he’ll shift us his overtime budget for the next three months.”

“They’ve been watching Harris and his merry band of whack-jobs at this place for weeks with no sign of Laney and no cause for a warrant,” David explains. “Can I tell him the best part?”

“I don’t know,” Don says with a smile. “I think Nikki shou…”

She talks over them both anyways.

“Our special friend Ian Edgerton is in town for Laney. He expects him to turn up any minute and rejoin those whack-jobs.”

 “ _Your_ special friend,” Colby insists. “I wasn’t in the prison with him for _that_ long.”

Nikki scowls and reaches for Colby’s hair to try and fluff it up. He can see Don’s smirk, inadequately concealed behind a forkful of food. Colby is sure his hair looks ridiculous; too long, badly cut, and seven hours flattened under a ball cap, but his mother would fly to LA and box his ears if he ever wore a hat to the table. The other three look fine, tired but excited about their successful night. Don has the look of relaxed enthusiasm on his face and Colby only knows of one other way to put that look there.

They fill Colby in on more of the details going forward on the now combined cases and the coalition of FBI forces. Contrary to a lot of television drama, there aren’t a lot of turf wars within the Bureau. Especially with something this big and potentially dangerous, everyone is glad for the added manpower. Colby can tell Don appreciates the elegant simplicity, the natural dovetailing of three open files without any bureaucratic intervention. Bolita has the Where, Eppes has the What, Edgerton has the Who, and now they all know the Why. It’s down to the When and with the combined effort of everyone involved now, they will be prepared for it.

“You were pretty spot-on about someone building an army,” Don says at last.

“Sometimes I wish I wasn’t always right about everything,” Colby laments.

Before anybody can slam on him with myriad examples of him being wrong about things, their server appears with a substantially loaded plate. The special, with double of everything.

“Everyone keep your hands clear of the table,” Don says. “Colby’s food has arrived.”

 

8.

It turns out Special Agent Ian Edgerton brings the When.

Colby arrives at the office after a second meal, a long shower, and a hint of a nap, to find Edgerton occupying his desk chair. Nikki and David are leaning in front of him, butts planted on the edge of Colby’s desk. It’s the very picture of normal workplace camaraderie, except that the workplace is currently handling a potential domestic terrorist with a frightening amount of weaponry, and the bad guy pays for his people’s loyalty with drugs.

“Granger, good to see you.”

Ian holds out his hand but doesn’t vacate the chair. They shake and Colby stands at the open end of the cubical.

“Hey, Ian. What’s going on?”

David hands a file over, with two pictures of young girls clipped to the front. Colby has to take a second closer glance to determine that they are in fact two different girls in the photos. They look like typical school ID photos, bland background, bodies turned slightly and faces straight on with tense smiles. Twins, he assumes, same year at school.

“Laney’s biological daughters, live in LA with their mother and her husband, went missing from school today,” Ian explains.

“You think Laney took them?”

“Seems a fair guess,” says David. “Don’s getting briefed on the missing persons side of things right now.”

“Bolita’s guys are watching the ranch on surveillance cameras they planted. If Laney has them and goes to meet up with Baby Harris and the other whack-jobs, we’ll know right away.”

Edgerton has a hint of eagerness in his voice that rubs Colby the wrong way so soon after learning two young girls have disappeared. He notices Ian has adopted the term “whack-jobs” that Nikki has earwormed all of them into using on this case, but there’s an even colder edge of condemnation to it somehow when Ian says it.

“Shouldn’t they be there in person? To cut him off before the girls are taken into the compound?”

“No cover on the approach,” David explains. Colby can hear the regret in his voice and knows he’d demanded the same answer. “Laney would see our guys and floor it in the other direction.”

“So we have to rely on him caring enough about his daughters to let them go once things heat up at the compound?” Colby can hear the edge in his own voice, but he’s more than a little uneasy at the idea of two kids on the same property as the unsettlingly large number of weapons he’s personally helped move.

“I don’t like it either, Granger, but we haven’t had luck finding the girls yet.”

The eagerness in Ian’s voice is still there but now Colby recognizes it as something less crass. Ian is just anxious to have things resolved.

“At least then we would know where they are,” David adds.

“Pile of guns, bunch of meth, a dozen whack-jobs, and now two innocent young girls,” Nikki says. “It keeps getting messier.”

“I need to follow up on a couple of Laney sightings, but I’ll bet we hear from Bolita’s team before we need them,” Ian says, rising to his feet.

“You can use my desk,” Nikki tells him. “Colby needs his to store his collection of vintage dirty coffee cups.”

“And for a place to rest his feet during chair naps,” David says.

Colby shrugs.

“Occasionally I even work here,” he says dryly, although he knows their comments have more to do with the fact that lately his work has been an interminable slough of overtime, of endless cups of coffee and desk naps, and not commentary on his laziness.

He has to step out of the way to let Nikki and Ian through when they move to leave. On the way past, Ian feints a friendly shoulder check at Colby, who comes back with an elbow.

“Hey Nik, maybe be nicer to him this time so he doesn’t go rogue and hold a gun to my head again?”

“Maybe. Thing is, I seem to recall that I didn’t have to hear your wiseass jokes the entire time he was doing that,” Nikki tosses back over her shoulder.

Colby looks at David. David smiles.

“Get your ass off my desk.”

They get the call from Bolita before Colby has a chance to settle in. Edgerton sends him to interrupt Don’s briefing.

_Good news, we know where the missing girls are. The bad news is it’s the place where an unholy number of weapons and drugs are stockpiled._

 

9.

The window on the ground floor at the back of the building isn’t very big, but Nikki gets the gist of what’s happening and calls Colby over. He slides into place beside her. She holds the binoculars steadily on target. She doesn’t hand them over. This way Colby can lean in and get the picture immediately, no adjustment, while keeping one hand securely on his weapon. It’s one of the reasons Colby likes Nikki supporting the tactical side. There are a hundred little things that can make the difference for a smooth operation, and she has always taken to it naturally.

Colby takes a moment to process what he’s seeing in the building. One of the militia men, Miller, is holding one of the girls by the throat up against the door. The other twin is struggling with another one of Laney’s men, and losing.

“Tell Don we’re going for the girls now,” Colby decides. He alternative is watching two teenage girls get assaulted for the next hour until the sky grows dark enough for a stealthier extraction. They’ll have to take the chance that the chaos in the back room will cover their approach.

“Simmer, let’s go.”

Colby hasn’t worked tactical with Agent Simpson before today, but he likes the guy from interactions in the past, and he seemed pretty sharp while they hashed out a bare bones pre-action on the hurried drive out here. The man is a giant, though. Six-five and two-thirty before the tac gear goes on, so there was never any question which one of them was going to get shoved through the window on this play.

Colby leaves his MP5 secured with Nikki and doublechecks the holstered Smith & Wesson on his thigh. He’s better about using the holster since Don started giving him lectures about shoving guns in his pants. (Also since an incident about which he will never tell Don, not in a million years, where he went to draw on a suspect with a knife and caught the PC945 on the bottom edge of the back of his tactical vest. Damned near dropped the gun after a long bit of fumbling. Narrowly missed having his neck perforated by the suspect. Possibly came very close to shooting himself in the ass. He’d used all his chits to keep David from telling that story.) Simpson keeps his MP5 strapped on, and it looks like a toy in his massive arms. The good news is, if Colby can get the girls back out the window, they won’t have to fall very far before Simmer will have them.

It’s not going to be pretty. Hand-to-hand and two against one. Neither man in the back room appears to be armed and the chance of one of the girls getting in the line of fire is too high for Colby to go in with his firearm in hand. Not all of the whack-jobs are meth-heads, but Colby feels okay about his chances if at least one of these guys is a burnout. Not much choice either way. He’s headed for a messy fight.

When they run free of cover, both men crouch down, though it has to be way more of a challenge for Simpson to get small. Colby goes to the right and Simpson to the left of the window, a predetermined choice based on handedness. Simpson raises his left leg into a 90 degree seat for Colby to step up to the window ledge, but Colby shakes his head. There’s a perfectly serviceable plastic milk crate already in place. He steps up and, keeping his head away from the window frame, uses a mirror to peak inside. The four occupants of the room are more or less in the same positions as they were moments ago, so Colby risks a quick lean in for a proper look, and, on his next exhale, hoists himself through the open side of the window.

He catches a break right off the bat, because Miller startles and shoves aside the girl he’s manhandling. The other guy has a hand tight around his girl’s wrist, so Colby moves between Miller and the first girl. He manages to get her over to the window and boosts her up before Miller tackles him. He tries to help the girl more, but he’s struggling enough trying to keep his feet under himself, and Simmer somehow reaches in like the hand of God and pulls the girl through.

Miller won’t let go, arms around Colby’s waist and he’s glad again that his gun isn’t tucked into the back of his pants. When he gets his feet planted, he lets Miller shove him back for an instant, does a little rope-a-dope thing before he puts all his power into a rushing move forward and rams him into the wall. Miller’s arms go loose, and Colby kicks out a leg to get an extra shot in before turning to go after the other girl.

Seeing her sister escape seems to have energized the girl and she manages to twist her arm free and bolt for the window. Again, Colby moves to get between her and the man attacking her, but it causes him to turn his back from Miller slightly. He catches a glimpse of whatever is about to hit him, a long dark shape like a wrench or a pipe. He manages to twist himself enough so that it’s a glancing blow, the object scraping along the side of his head more than a direct hit, but it’s enough to put him down.

 

10.

They’re shoving Colby along a hallway when he is next able to make sense of anything. Somehow, he is partially self-propelled, stumbling along on wobbly legs, _helping them_ , so he puts an end to that and becomes a dead weight. Wherever they’re leading him, he’s not in that much of a hurry to get there.

He takes a frustrated kick to his back that’s dampened somewhat by his tactical vest, and then there are hands all over him, trying to peel open the Velcro panels of his body armor. He panics and struggles, quite effectively, when they try to get the vest over his head, landing a kick and a swiping hack with the edge of his hand, but then his own gun dances in front of his face and Colby stills. The armor comes off and a sick feeling of desperation wells up in him.

_We got the girls out_ , he tells himself. That will have to be enough, because from now on things are going to be too dicey to call. Even with the girls safe, the urgency hasn’t lessened to shut down whatever plans Laney has for his amassed weaponry. There’s a federal agent inside the building now, at the mercy of the whack-jobs. The team won’t be able to wait them out for long, and (thanks for the math, Charlie) Colby knows with alarming statistical accuracy his chances of being murdered by Laney and his men or being hit in the crossfire during the coming siege.

They drag him a few more yards down the hallway. He goes along easier than before, now that his head is clear enough that he can count the number of weapons currently trained on him. At a partially open door they stop and hold him up. Two more men meet the entourage, walking from the other end of the hallway. Laney, Colby recognizes, and a shorter guy dressed dramatically in jungle camouflage with a bandana over half his face. _These cartoonish fucking hicks._ Colby can’t believe, out of everything he’s survived, these are the criminal masterminds that are going to write his final chapter. In crayon.

The camo guy wordlessly steps forward and sucker punches Colby in the gut. Just as wordlessly, Colby throws up all over the guy’s badly-polished combat boots. He’s vaguely aware of shouting, and his feet get kicked out from under him as he’s dragged through the doorway. He’s unceremoniously dumped on the floor, his head reeling. The camo guy looms over him. The bandana is pulled down around his neck now and some still-connected synapses in Colby’s head recognize him.

“Hello, _Baby_.”

He’s too far down the path to unconsciousness to block any piece of the boot swinging towards his side.

 

11.

_Sit Rep._

Colby’s internal monologue at times like this is always in the disturbingly cheerful tone of a British special forces officer he once worked with in Afghanistan. Dennison was the guy’s name, and everyone called him either Denny or Fuckwit. A wave a nausea washes out Colby’s train of thought and he starts over, Denny’s breezy voice in his head.

_Sit Rep. One window, one door. Door… locked. Window too high to see out._

He sees the shadow of feet through the crack under the door.

_One guard? Chain... the fuck…? Hands are loose, at least._

The small room is recognizable as a bathroom, though not one that has been functional any time in the last ten years.

_Bathroom fixtures… Could probably get a shard of mirror for eye gouging. No lid on the toilet tank for bludgeoning anyone. Pity that._

Colby’s gut roils and he swallows against it. He flexes methodically through parts of his body in sequence from his feet up and then gingerly presses around the injury above his left temple. There’s a lot of blood, but then that’s usually the way with head injuries.

_Concussion and a half. Nothing broken. No vest, no shoes, no gun, no knife._

They even took his damn watch, a fancy diving number Don had given him after his old one disappeared from his personal effects during his prison stint. He still has his belt, the empty holsters for his ID and comms still attached at his hip. Colby hauls himself to his feet, relying heavily on the solid handhold of an ancient cast iron bath tub. He reconsiders the nothing broken determination when his back flares in agony around some ribs but chooses to go with blind optimism. He tests his range, one ankle wrapped tightly with a heavy chain and secured with a padlock. The other end of the chain is similarly attached to a cast iron pipe along the wall. He’s locked up in a bathroom built to survive the apocalypse.

Colby slides down to sit against the tub and tries to work the chain down over his heel. It’s secured tight enough to almost cut off circulation, so there’s nothing to be gained there. Standing again, he pivot-hops until he can reach the sink, but it jostles his head and he winds up just hanging on to the edge of the built-in sink for a moment until his vision clears.

Mirrors, in this day and age, are secured with heavy duty adhesives in addition to whatever frame job they have, but this sucker is an ancient lead glass monstrosity held in place with heavy metal clips and screws. Colby pulls his belt off and tries the metal prong as a screwdriver. After a bit of furious scrabbling, the first screw comes loose.

_Kiss my ass, McGyver._

 

 

12.

_Where the fuck is Granger._

Ian still has eyes on the window where he can intermittently sight the now armor-clad Laney, but he hasn’t seen any sign of the original owner of the vest. They have heat imaging of the front side of the house, and the field tech tracking that hasn’t seen any additional people pop up, either. There are pairs of agents assigned to almost every useful vantage point, but nobody has seen or heard from Granger since Simpson risked a glance into the building before running the girls to safety. As far as Simpson could tell, they’d had him on the floor with two bad guys getting in their cheap shots.

For Ian, the sight of Laney in Colby’s vest is distressing. The vest itself doesn’t stop Ian from shooting someone in the head if the right line presents itself, but it’s a grim discovery. Appropriating weapons is one thing, but looting something that personal, stripped purposefully from the down agent, has some terrifying implications. It speaks to Laney’s expectation of how things are going to go down, with bullets, for one thing. And with Granger, Ian knows if he’d had any fight left in him at all, he wouldn’t have given up the vest easily.

“We have something… a flashing light maybe? Over here,” Betancourt announces. They are all on the secondary channel now, since Colby’s communication set is obviously compromised. “Movement on the upper floor. Rear, east corner.”

_Good girl_ , thinks Ian.

“I think I can see Granger but it’s not making a lot of sense.”

“I’m coming over,” Ian announces. “I can’t get a clear shot on Laney here anyways.”

Ian calls out to Nikki before he approaches her location, so he doesn’t get hit. Nikki is not his biggest fan these days and Ian’s stealth can be unsettling. She keeps her binoculars in place for him, lined up at a high-placed wide window with a horizontal louver that has been pulled inwards on a hinge along the top, but Ian sets down to look through his scope. Nikki goes back to looking through the binoculars.

Colby is there, just in view, somehow upside-down in the window’s opening. It looks like he’s sitting on the floor, but the angle doesn’t make sense.

“It’s a mirror,” Edgerton says quickly. “Granger’s there, but he’s rigged up some kind of… Betancourt, watch the bottom left.”

Ian clips on a laser sight and turns it on. He aims it into the small horizontal window and flicks it off and on a few times.

“I see him!” Nikki can’t contain her relief. “Colby’s moving, he gave a sign.”

“What sign?”

“The look thing… like shading his eyes. And rifle, I know that one.”

“That means he can see the laser. If he can figure line of sight…”

“He’s moving over. I can see him better now.”

Ian flicks the sight laser off and turns the scope to the lower corner of the window. Granger has seen the laser reflection enough to position himself and is leaning into view. Ian keys his radio.

“We have eyes on Granger.”

Don is too fast to hit his transmit button and Edgerton can hear the tail end of a ragged exhale.

“Is he…?” Don coughs. “Status?”

“Alive,” he reports automatically. “They got his radio, but he’s rigged up a mirror. We can signal a bit. I’ll ask him.”

In dashes and dots with the laser sight, Ian signals “OK” and Colby nods his head, hesitates for a second before he flashes the okay sign, then indicates for handcuffs.

“He’s chained to something,” Nikki interprets. “I can see it at his ankle. He’s got some blood on him, too.”

Ian had shifted his sightline to aim the laser where Colby would be able to see it, but at Nikki’s words, he scans back over to look over the man himself. Sure enough, Granger has made himself more easily visible. Ian can even read the calm, slightly annoyed expression that seems to be the man’s combat face. He relays Colby’s affirmative to the okay and that he’s shackled to what looks like a large water pipe over an old bathtub. He leaves out the blood for now. No need to get Eppes wound up too much yet. With Granger, the odds are about even that the blood is not all his.

 

13.

The revised tactical planning is assisted by Charlie with probable schematics courtesy David’s detailed sketching and a simple rangefinder. As much as Don wants to move the raid up immediately now that one of his men is inside, it sounds as if Colby is secure for the time being. Now Don just has to make sure he stays that way through the midnight takedown of a heavily armed militia.

He climbs into the tactical support truck where David and Charlie are working out a few scenarios.

“Still no contact with Laney?” Charlie asks first. If contact is made with the whack-jobs, a whole series of his assumptions have to be trashed and reimagined. So far, Don’s loudspeaker efforts have been ignored.

“Nothing from inside. What have you guys got?”

“There are a lot of goddamn guns in there,” David says.

“And we don’t have a lot of information about the back half of the building,” worries Charlie.

“We need more,” Don says. “Colby’s partitioned off for now, but if we bust in and don’t bag them all up fast enough, they’ll beat us to him.”

“How can we get more information, though? This is everything we’ve been able to read from Bolita’s surveillance, from infrared scanning, from orthophotos…”

“It would be great to get some information from Colby,” says David before Charlie spirals. “What the deal with Edgerton’s signal show?”

“Colby busted a mirror off a wall and rigged it above a window somehow. Ian got his attention with a laser sight and they’re chatting.”

Don wishes the situation was lighter, so he could properly cherish the look of confusion on Charlie’s face.

“… _How?_ ”

“Military hand signals and Morse Code with the laser on Ian’s rifle.”

David cracks a small, proud smile at that, shaking his head slowly.

“So how much can we rely on hand signals?” Charlie asks. He flips a page on his notepad and Don can tell he’s already working out a prioritized list of questions for Ian to relay.

“Tactical information between Ian and Colby?” David says. “I mean, if anybody can communicate that way, those are the guys.”

“Right.” Charlie starts scribbling on the page. “I’ll run these by Ian and see what he thinks we can get.”

“It’s Colby in there,” Don says. “He’ll give you what you need.”

 

14.

Ian is signalling in deliberate, steady Morse, and Colby is keeping up for the most part. Ian reads out the hand signals he gets in response, and Nikki relays the information to David and Charlie. It’s slow-going, but since the minors were safely pulled out and the bad guys seem to be ignoring their FBI prisoner, nobody is in a hurry to storm the building. Flash-bangs and night vision tech will be Advantage: FBI, and they’re still a half hour from optimal dark skies.

Colby has signalled he has one guard and gestured to the door of the disused bathroom that is doing double duty as his jail cell. Ian has relayed the message that Colby should barricade the door and take cover on his go signal, but after a long Morse string, Nikki stops him. She puts her hand on Ian’s forearm.

“Did you see that?”

“Looked like a bit of a swoon,” Ian agrees.

Colby had already indicated his injuries to Ian and Nikki, mainly by holding his hand to the side of his head and raising a blood-reddened hand, palm out towards the window. Head wounds bleed a lot more than you’d think, and so far, Colby hasn’t seemed too troubled by it, but now he’s swaying a bit. Colby sinks down until he is holding his head in his hands, his back against the rusting bathtub, no longer looking at the spot where Ian’s laser is hitting.

“Is he shaking? I don’t think he got much of that last one,” Nikki says.

She radios an update to Don that Colby will need prompt medical attention when they can, and that there’s no use trying to pull more information from him.

“He did good,” Ian says, almost to himself. Colby appears to be listing to one side. “Now he just has to sit tight a little longer.”

 

15.

Before Don can process what Nikki has told him; _Colby’s head might be worse than we thought. He might not be alert enough to help himself,_ Ian calls Don on his sniper-only channel.

“You want me to pass along a message before things get wild?”

Ian’s world-weary tone is oddly comforting. Business as usual. Serious, but placid. Don takes a deep breath. A message to Colby? _We’re coming for you._ He knows that. _Please be okay._ Not helpful. How is he supposed to pack all his sprawling emotions into a message for Colby when they both need to be thinking clearly. And how is Colby supposed to understand any of it, via Morse code of all things, when he’s barely conscious.

“Nikki just said he’s not really tracking the conversation any more,” Don says finally.

As soon as he says it, the realization occurs, that Ian’s suggestion was for Don’s benefit. To feel usefully connected to Colby before he has to initiate a dangerous action. So he can imagine he had Colby’s _blessing_. Don swears under his breath. Charlie and David glance over briefly before going back to their schematics.

“I can give him something short,” Ian says. “Just a reassurance.”

And of course, Ian has seen something, either in Colby or Don, their demeanor, some slight subtext, because Ian sees everything. David flashes a questioning look at Don, probably wondering who is on the other side of a conversation reaching Don’s ears only. Don turns his back to Charlie and David. He pauses for a moment before his voice cracks and he relays a few digits. As soon as the numbers are out of his mouth (Why did he reach to _numbers?_ ) he shoots a look behind him and can see that Charlie has sparked, filing it away for later analysis. Christ, he’s going to have a chalkboard devoted to this when they get out of their current mess, this goofy little code, too cute by half, of Don’s old baseball uniform number plus Colby’s birthday. It’s ridiculous, but it’s the simplest shorthand he can think of that only Colby might understand. Ian repeats the numbers to make sure he has it right.

“What does it mean?”

“It’s the code to my gun safe,” Don answers truthfully, cutting Ian off before he can speculate.

Charlie’s eyes go fractionally wider as he redoubles his efforts to map out ingress routes with the safest possible lines of fire for keeping Colby out of harm’s way.

 

 

16.

It’s time. Ian hits the floor in front of Colby’s tethered foot with the sight laser, drawing a lazy pattern to get his attention. Colby appears to take a steadying breath, then looks to the spot where Ian has been signalling. Ian deals out the four-digit message from Don. The look on Granger’s face (encouraged, Ian would call it, after a brief flash of confusion and self-consciousness) would be amusing if it wasn’t so quickly wiped out by a pained shudder.

Moments later, Don gives the sign that they’re ready to breach. Ian spells out T-U-B in morse code, and Colby nods understanding, then Ian counts down from five for him with the sight, shutting off the laser and leaving off the two and one so he can shift and have focus on the door in case anyone inside the building makes a run for the hostage. He doesn’t have a guaranteed shot, no safety assurance for Colby what with the reflection and strange angles, but he’ll take a desperate one if there’s no other chance.

At the silent and imaginary “one” mark, Colby dives for the tub and manages to get most of himself inside, good cover except for where his chained foot dangles over the edge. He holds his arms up over his head and shields his face as the whole building erupts with a stunning assault of flash grenades followed by heavy gunfire.

The raid is over in moments, and nobody comes through the door to the room holding Colby, though Ian notices some splintering in the walls where some wild shots made it through to that part of the building.

“Colby?” Don asks.

“Looks okay,” Ian reports quickly. “Back east corner, second to last door. Bring the poor guy some bolt cutters.”

Nikki leaves to go and cover any potential strays exiting the building on the back side, though the infil team looks to be too thorough to lose any stragglers. Edgerton keeps an eye on Granger instead. He watches Colby tentatively raise his head and wipe blood away from his eye. He looks around carefully, presumably listening to the live and in-person version of what Ian hears; the FBI clearing rooms through the building. When he decides he’s safe, he flops himself back over the edge of the tub.

_No, Colby, stay down,_ Ian murmurs to himself, but the injured agent is already scrambling up on shaking legs. Ian stands too, no longer worried about cover, and gets a better angle to look into the building. For the first time, the viewpoint lets Ian get a good look at Colby’s lower half, his right leg bearing a short chain padlocked around his ankle. Colby looks woozy, but he shifts as close to the ingenious mirror-louver invention as he can get and smiles a goofy smile, upside down from that reflected vantage point, at Ian.

 

 

17.

Don didn’t have high enough clearance to read Colby’s reports from the day of the freighter, but he imagines it wasn’t the agent’s best work. His paperwork from this Laney mess is almost hilariously bad. An austere and absurd disjointed chronology of awkwardly formal Colbyisms. Matter-of-fact mentions of lost time (“Unable to account for some minutes” is his oft-repeated tagline on this one) and descriptions of every time he hit back at his captors as if he’s expecting censure for giving a black eye to a suspect who had later turned into a corpse during the gun battle anyways.

It’s funny, because Colby’s after-action reports are usually flawless; swiftly dispersing threads of actions and resulting reactions expanding out and covering entire chaotic battles with blank precision. He has a battle worn perspective, where information is met with clarity and calm. He’s explained it to Don before, that he can recall every detail, but it doesn’t really leave room to process things. Not during, not after. So every traumatic thing in Colby’s life is just preserved in his head, emotionless and scarily accurate. Everything available to be recalled and re-lived on demand. It sounds horrifying.

In contrast, Don’s own head spins with the processing after traumatic stuff happens. The what ifs and what nows can loom for weeks, seeping into every day’s functional behaviour. Don broods. Colby seems to just shut down whatever parts of himself he needs to shut down. It’s a comfort to Don, in a selfish and obtuse way, that if anything ever happens to Colby, it will most likely be met with clinical reckoning rather than fear. It’s a distinction that gets Colby’s psych evals an extra look, a possibly unhealthy ability for compartmentalizing, but he seems to skate their recommendations with the exact same dismissive calm.

And Colby is a _happy_ guy. Don probably worries about him more than he should, given that he himself has never been as laidback and blissed out as Colby gets after a day surfing, a good meal, and a solid eight hours sleep. Colby had woken up after a long nap in the hospital (Don was reassured that it had as much to do with his recent spate of sleep deprivation as his head injury) and a lazy grin had spread across his face, like he was perfectly at ease with how close he’d been to total disaster. _A week vacation_ , he’d said immediately upon recognizing Don. _You promised._

And so Colby all but moved into Don’s house, where he sits now, taking up a substantial share of the space on the couch and drinking tap water from the massive glass beer stein that usually sits at the ready next to the sink whenever Colby is around. Don flips through a few reports, but mainly listens to the Kings game on the television and watches Colby.

“Feeling better today?”

Colby shrugs. He’s been maddeningly evasive about his injuries.

“Better enough to surf tomorrow?”

“That’s the plan, yeah.”

Don takes that as an encouraging sign. He reads Colby’s sketchy report again, from start to finish it only takes a minute, and finds himself staring at the line of stitches along Colby’s head. If he was unhappy about his haircut before, he’s got to be pissed off about the bit they shaved down at the hospital.

“So what was that secret military sign language the other day?”

“Standard visual tactical signals.”

“No way. Nikki knows hand signals. She says this was something next level. Remind me never to play charades with you and Ian.”

“Wow. Charades with Ian…” Colby muses. “Can’t think that’ll come up in this lifetime.”

They watch hockey quietly for a while until Colby starts to stretch his neck in the way that suggests his headache is back. Don thinks about nixing the surfing plans, but he’ll be at work all day tomorrow and Colby will just make his own decisions anyway. Instead he twists himself around and pulls Colby back against him, rubbing his shoulders and the base of his neck. Colby settles into a content puddle, essentially laying on Don and making appreciative noises. He seems close to sleep when Don feels a sudden tightening in the body against him.

“Oh. Hey. My gun is in evidence processing hell. I’ll need to get my back-up from you for next week.”

Don would rather Colby take more time off, or stay on the bench, away from anything that requires being armed for a while, but like vetoing the surfing, he can’t quite bring himself to force it.

“Yeah, of course, no problem.”

“And you should probably rekey a new code on your gun safe while we’re at it,” Colby adds wryly.

“Oh. Yeah, about that…”

Colby sits up straight.

“I knew it! I tried to convince myself I hallucinated that. Holy hell, Don.”

“It’s not like anybody knows what the numbers mean...”

“Yeah, nobody we know has any knack for figuring out the significance of certain numbers.”

“Hey, I was just trying to… I don’t know.”

“I’m screwing with you. It was kind of nice, to get that… message.”

“Yeah?”

Colby drops back down onto Don, almost heavily enough to wind him.

“Yeah, by far the highlight of the entire hostage situation.”

Don chuckles as he wraps his arms around Colby. He was dangerously close to being sucked into the processing vortex. Reading the reports and picturing Colby the way he looked that night asleep, ashen and uncomfortable looking in a hospital bed. But the guy just eases Don out of it, every time.

“If Charlie works it out and gives you a hard time, you can’t shoot him,” he warns.

“I know. Because evidence recovery already took my gun.”

“Among other reasons.”

Don shifts himself, fumbling more upright until he can manhandle Colby into a better position, holding him closely, nuzzling around his ear and the side of his head without any thread in it.

“I can’t believe you gave Ian Edgerton our passcode,” Colby mutters.

“Yeah, well. I am unable to account for some minutes.”


End file.
